We need to learn that peer-to-peer works

Jimmy Wales, revolutionary luminary who founded online peer-reviewed encyclopaedia, Wikipedia.

My passion is captured best in the vision statement that guides my work: "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet has free access to the sum of all human knowledge."

I take that statement very seriously. The so-called "digital divide" between poor and wealthy countries is difficult to solve when we are talking about material objects. But governments are the only barriers preventing the spread of knowledge, and the only solution is freedom of speech.

Let me pick apart my famous statement bit by bit. By "every single person on the planet" I challenge us all to think beyond the Internet. Only 1 billion of us have Web access at this point, but due to rapidly developing technology, the next billion and the billion after that will be online -- talking to us and joining the global conversation -- long before we have had time to think about the implications.

Wikipedia now exists in more than 125 languages, Wikia in more than 65. These projects -- to build an encyclopedia and to build the rest of the library -- show us the path to sharing knowledge around the world. Our open-source approach allows anyone anywhere, who can find a way to connect to the Internet, to join in our grand dream of building a world of free knowledge.

And by "free" I don't just mean "free" as in free beer (no cost or low cost) but also "free" as in free speech. People must be empowered to copy, modify and redistribute -- commercially or non-commercially -- the knowledge that we have to share.

Basic knowledge, made available under conditions that allow copying, modification and redistribution, can create a whole new global dynamic. When I speak to philanthropists who are interested in doing some good in the world, I explain to them: if you spend $1 million sending textbooks to a poor country, you have done something good. But if you spend the same sum sending freely licensed textbooks to that nation, you have changed the game permanently.

By "access", I don't mean just access to a static library. Our search engines must be free as well: they should use open-source software, be publicly transparent and community controlled. This is the task of Search Wikia.

For too long, we have accepted secrecy as a precondition for quality in search engines, even though the best computer scientists tell us that security through obscurity is a bad idea. The best way to battle spammers and scammers is through open public participation in the process of ranking and rating search results.

And by "the sum of all human knowledge" I mean everything that communities can gather and share, whether an encyclopedia, a dictionary, or a guide to life in all of its myriad forms.

We are living in a unique era. People talk about peer-to-peer, but it is my belief that few have truly grasped what that means, and where we are going. We need to learn that peer-to-peer works through respect of each other as peers.

How can we do that? The only way is to recognize the value of each individual human life, and respect the rights of the individual to create, grow and build something new and exciting. We must have a global social environment that encourages and supports the best among us to come forward and contribute to the grand project of knowledge.

Peer-to-peer learning is the key. When a child in Zimbabwe can directly share a story of hope and pain with a child in Alabama or Albania, we are -- for the first time -- making real the notion that we are all here together on a tiny planet.

And we had better make the best of it.